Soviet Log 75
Premature Flagellation We picked things up as we were about to enter the Cathedral that contained the sacred relics that we needed in order to perform a ritual that would destroy a relic but prevent the Herald from entering our world and 'heralding' a new era of Papal dominance. We had prepared extensively. We had observed and researched the Cathedral and its veil of defenses. We had the nanites to foil the technical scrutiny of the veil. We had specialized Arch magic to foil the mystic scrutiny of the veil. We had disguises (magical and mundane). We had forged documents. We had a planted a cover story for visiting. We had ley line nanites to prevent the cathedral's travel. In short; we were ready. With brazen confidence born of experience and hubris we strutted past the extra Nazi defenses around the cathedral and approached the front doors. As we approached that asshole were-lynx taunted Mei telepathically with threats to kill our friends and then us. She attempted to taunt him into coming in after us but he declined to enter the obvious trap. After knocking, we were greeted by two nuns who invited us in. A blind Nun named Sister Superior who was clearly in charge and her subordinate, a nun called Sister Rouge. Eva questioned why Sister Rogue appeared to have a blood spattered smock on and she became very evasive. In retrospect this should have been a massive red flag, but we were focused on the mission so we let it slide and stepped into the cathedral. Upon entering we immediately were sucked into a worm hole that dilated time, isolated us from each other, effectively paralyzed us and slowed our actions down. We were also being pushed farther and farther away from each other. We were unable to do much other than speak! The blind head nun, ('Sister Superior'), began to question us one by one. "Who are you, really?" Eva was first and, realizing that that the gig was up but not knowing how much Sister Superior knew she attempted to milk out some clue as to what was going through Superiors head and answered her question with a question. Apparently that was the wrong answer as Mother Superior just raised an eyebrow and moved onto Kat. Katya followed with her 'ditzy nun' her antics which were expertly played but the Sister Superior was not having it. Next was Roquette. Rocquette: "It was her Eyes! She could see right into my Soul, I could tell! No point in lying to someone like that...". Oh, Roq. She decided in the spur of the moment to toss aside our plan and reveal everything. And I mean *everything*. There were no secrets held back. Who we were, the Herald, the relics, the nazis, our missions both immediate and long-term. The rest of us watched in shocked disbelief as it all came out. As soon as Roq said that we were agents of Baba Yaga attempting to stop the herald from entering our world, sister Superior said to the other "did you hear that Sister Rouge?" She responded by putting us all in shackles that stripped away our ability to gain benefits from any external source of power, including all types of magic, technology, and training. After that we were taken to an interrogation room in the back but it was really just a formality. Roq was giving our interrogators whatever they asked for - more even. They mocked us for having no idea what was going on, for playing an incredibly shallow and shortsighted game and they told us humanity was meaningless in the grand scheme. Desperate to avoid being cursed and in the grips of a paranoid fervor, Eva even offered to willingly help the nuns attain their goals (control of the Papacy), if they kept the cursing to just Roq and Kat (who had seemed to raise Sister Superior's hackles for some reason). She seemed to consider it for a moment but when Eva couldn't come up with any compelling reason for her to not curse Eva and Mei the Mother Superior retorted that the party is "notoriously untrustworthy and duplicitous". This would seem to indicate that they already knew who we were, that they have been keeping tabs on us for some time, and that we never really had any chance of pulling off what we went there to do. In the end, we were cursed with helping the Head Nun 'assume control of the papacy' and sent on our merry way. A little sorer and with a massive no-option-but-get-cursed side mission. Failure to follow through on the curse would result in bad things like not being able to cast spells or use nanites. We were warned that it would be the same as when we were shackled if we did anything that directly contravened or conflicted with the nuns plans. We were then portalled to a monastery outside of town to reflect on events. It turns out that the Nazis also knew what we had planned and they decided to set a trap for us. While we were in the cathedral they captured Lily, Giacomo, and Cowboy using a truck equipped with some sort of vehicle-lock-down ray. They figured if we survived the nuns and came out with our score that they would then take it from us and if we didn't survive, then the nuns would have done them a favour. Fortunately for us the nuns are big on wasting resources and since they knew everything there was to know about us they realized that Danikov's connection to the Church gave them the in that they needed to further their plans and so they released us outside of the Nazi cordon. Our friends were not answering their coms and the vehicle telemetry was offline, Eva could tell (using her intracranial transceiver) that it was being physically shielded in some way. After pulling ourselves together from suffering such a major setback we decided to go rescue our friends. We eventually tracked them down to a camp outside of Milan. Having had enough of 'talk until you get caught' we opted to sneak in to the camp. Using Boris we scanned the camp and figured they were most likely in the building with the unscannable garage and detention centre. Our choice proved good when we picked the right garage where they had stored our truck and found our friends being tortured in the adjacent detention centre. In no mood to leave anything to chance, and hungry for vengeance, we stealthily murdered a couple engineers in their sleep and freed Lily, (Cowboy was dead but we grabbed his body anyway, so that we could attempt to resuscitate him later). We then turned our attention to the interrogators and Giacomo. After a brief surprise round, the Nazis were all dead (Katya setting a new party record for most damage dealt in a single attack) and we had our friends (or what was left of them) on the bus. Once again the Nazis proved to be one step ahead of us. The Tsyplenok Vagon was being locked in place by some kind of dampening field. As Eva moved to the security console to shut it down the rest of the party saw to the care of our friends. What turned out to be a theme for the evening continued as yet again we were upstaged by the Nazis when a bomb exploded inside of cowboy's corpse damaging the vehicle and spreading cowboy juice into the deepest recesses of the shag carpeted ceiling. Katya got a chance to put her Dance style into action here as she pirouetted over to Giacomo and flung him clear but took the brunt of the blast herself. It was at about this time that Eva decided that this went from a covert op to a Shock-and-awe op and set up remote detonated explosives on the fuel tanks in the garage. "Examples must be made. We have to send a message that if you fuck with us we will bring doom upon your house." Katya, meanwhile, salvaged for her lost gear since the van had been cleaned out. We ended it with the garage door open, the vehicle locked down with everyone but Eva on it, and Nazis closing in. What a night... Rewards 11 Generic 1 Combat Katya 1 Benny and 3 random points Eva 1 BennyCategory:Soviet